Soon, the creature had scuttled around to the front of her, and dropped to the floor with a clattering noise.

It was a spider. Fitz wasn't afraid of spiders. Except when, like this one, they were the size of an overnight bag.

Fitz said over his shoulder, 'Run?'

'Run,' confirmed the Doctor, so they did.

At one end of the cave, the hard contours of the uneven floor curved away into a narrow doorway. Fitz hurried through after the Doctor, aware of the scraping sound of the spider as it scuttled after them.

They plunged on through the narrow passages. Sometimes one of the rawbone conduits split without warning, and the Doctor would dive down one route without hesitation. His long stride swiftly took him ahead. Fitz was sometimes aware which way to turn only by seeing the Doctor's shadow flickering after him.

At one of these junctions, Fitz burst out of a narrow exit and found himself at one side of a tall, broad cavern. He had been following hard on the heels of the Doctor's shadow, and was therefore amazed to see the Doctor a dozen yards away on the other side, recognisable from the familiar green coat and tousled brown hair. He had his back to Fitz, and was trying without much success to open a couple of heavy metal doors set into the far wall. The Doctor turned to see where Fitz was, and called over, 'Give me a hand with these.'

The Doctor's shadow was spread across the boneyellow floor immediately in front of Fitz. It stepped forward across the cavern and rejoined the Doctor, who seemed not to notice.

Fitz was just about to comment when two things happened. First, he remembered that there were no other shadows here.

And second, the scuttling sound of the huge spider came from immediately behind him.

Fitz gave a loud cry of alarm, and raced over to join the Doctor, tugging at the doors. They did not budge.

Across the chamber from them, the spider appeared at the only other exit. It hesitated in the open archway, its foremost legs tapping an impatient rhythm on the hard floor. There was a clicking echo throughout the room. Fitz watched the Doctor for a reaction, but he was holding his head in his hands and moaning softly. 'My head feels like it's going to burst.'

Fitz thought about Compassion earlier, but said nothing.

The spider moved towards them. He could see. mouth parts opening and closing in its massive head.

Fitz took one of the Doctor's hands away from his head, and pulled him away from the huge, closed doors and around the outside of the room. 'Get ready to make a run for it,' he said.

The Doctor stumbled after him.

The spider had reached the middle of the chamber now. It was hard to know which of its many eyes was watching them, to judge when they could run.

In the end, Fitz gave up trying to work it out. He could feel his stomach quivering inside, and a tightness stretching through his chest. There was nothing brave about it, he told himself, nothing brave at all: there was just no choice.

'Go, Doctor!' he hissed, and pushed him firmly in the back so that he stumbled along the wall.

The spider rotated, shivering on the skeletal arcs of its eight legs, ready to follow the Doctor.

Element of surprise, Fitz told himself. He stepped towards the spider, moving quickly, getting the number of paces right as his speed gathered. He pulled back his right foot, his favourite foot, ready to put the ball in the back of the net.

The spider twisted back towards him. His foot flew forward, and the instep of his scuffed brown brogue swung up viciously beneath its head.

There was a brittle crunch as his foot connected. The hideous creature flew backwards, its legs folding together. Before the spider hit the far wall, Fitz was already legging it himself, out of the chamber.

'Go!' he shouted at the Doctor, who was cowering in the doorway. 'Go on!'

The Doctor didn't say anything, just vanished out of the room.

Fitz could hear the spider scuttling after him again. He charged around the corner after the Doctor, and found himself at one end of a long bone corridor. The Doctor was already at the far end, several hundred yards away. It was like staring down the wrong end of a telescope, Fitz thought. He shivered with the feeling of dcja vu.

'Don't wait for me!' he called after the Doctor, before taking one step on the long stretch between them.

Suddenly, however, he was standing right next to the Doctor.

'No need to shout,' complained the Doctor, poking himself in the ear with his forefinger.

'This place is trying to spook us,' said Fitz.

'It's succeeding,' said the Doctor, and pointed at two figures twenty yards ahead of them at the next bend.

Fitz stared at them. 'I'll never complain about crappy ghost trains again.'

The two figures were clearly the Doctor and Fitz. The Doctor standing next to Fitz turned to look back the way they had just come. 'Is the spider close behind us?' he asked fearfully.

Ahead of them, the distant figure of the other Doctor had turned around too.' ... close behind us?' Fitz could hear faintly.

The Doctor tapped him on the shoulder, and turned him round. Far beyond them, at the wrong end of the telescope, they could see another Fitz and Doctor with their backs turned.

'Temporal distortion?' asked Fitz. 'Time loop?'

The Doctor shook his head.

'All done with mirrors?' Fitz ventured.

The Doctor indicated a door beside them. It had three large indented circles in it, and at first Fitz thought it was part of the wall inside Compassion's console room. 'More things to frighten us?'

The Doctor was pressing his fingers hard against his temples, screwing his eyes half closed against the pain. 'Brave heart,' he said distantly, reached out and opened the door. He stepped through and beyond without a moment's hesitation. His shadow slipped after him, swallowed whole by pitchdark nothing.

Fitz considered the inky blackness, vacillating for a second. Then he thought about the bone spider, breathed in deeply, and jumped through the doorway.

First Interlude In his footsteps His skimmer crosses the sky like a tossed stone skipping across water. In the rear scanner he sees jittering glimpses of landscape as he breaks cloud cover the vast sea boiling away still under the setting suns, red and ruddy mountainsides, measureless plains stretching out before him. He sees it all but takes nothing in.

All he cares about is the knowledge he seeks. Somewhere on this planet he will find it if the ancient library still stands. Its location is as secret as the forbidden information it purports to hold.

If any of his own kind knew he was here, he would be dead. The .misinformation camps were not set up on Gallifrey without reason. The reality bombs were carefully detonated to obscure, to indoctrinate, to keep the truth hidden from minds such as his own. Minds that are considered reactionary, traitorous, because they wish to think for themselves.

He is here to learn the origins of the War To learn why the Time Lords are losing everything.

Paranoia and fear have replaced complacency and arrogance in the traditional Gallifreyan character; he is truly a Lord of his Time as he checks and rechecks for any sign he is being followed. He seems typical in many respects of men now dwelling on one of the nine Gallifreys. These planetary clones were constructed as bolt holes, hideouts, decoys to draw Enemy fire even before the first shots were fired at least, that is what he believes. He wants, for the first time in his long life, to know. So little is really known now.

He's been told, taught, trained, that to live now is as to live in Gallifrey's glorious past.

Ancient biological defences against such threats as the Charon and the Great Vampires have been revived and reconnected, augmented by science of the darkest design so as to have still more devastating, more destructive capabilities. Once clocks ticked on Gallifrey, but now the people do. It is a planet of walking bombs.

He wants to know why. He's risking so much just by being here. He feels so exposed in this primitive machine he might as well be naked in midair, screaming for the reprisals to come.

He will be missed. He will be searched for.

He feels there is no going back now.

But be has an example to follow. A hero known as the Doctor, who left Gallifrey in the ancient times. A man of peace, ingenuity and the most extraordinary luck.

In his own lifetime, chance has been eliminated. Each battle is fought and refought until time is so worn down it can no longer support the conflict, and collapses. The hole is sealed, the battle moves on, never won or lost, merely reenacted by both sides, again and again. The reasons why, even the form of the Enemy, constantly shifting, forgotten, irrelevant.

He is back in the past now, at a time when the Doctor was in his greatest danger, hunted by a hundred thousand agents scattered throughout space and time. They waited for this misfit to reappear in his stolen TARDIS so they could catch him and steal back the ship that would sire the first fighting force. Once, that ship bad been a woman. She'd been transfigured into the most precious weapon Gallifrey could ever possess.

A means to fight the endless War.

A signalling circle of red in the display screen distracts him. At last, after skimming the planets desolate surface for hours, his skimmer is detecting the tiniest signs of life squeezing through defective filters, originating from a nameless mountain range in the southern hemisphere. Somewhere in the lifeless homogeneity of Pangea is the Great Library, submerged in a trough of rock as if itself nestling between the pages of an ancient book. He will have his answers, have documented historical fact, and he will know what his life has been for.

The tiniest sparkle of reflected light in glass signals his destination. He likens himself to the Doctor at that fateful time. Knowing nothing, about to discover the truth of it all.

Chapter Five.

Dusty reception

The stiff wind swirled the orangered sand across the barren plain, gusting it into coloured clouds backlit by a dying sun. In the distance, far to his left, maybe ten kilometres off, the Doctor could discern the stark outlines of an industrial city's edges. In all other directions, the stark landscape vanished to the horizon with only the rarest of scrubby halfdead trees to break the pattern.

He waited patiently for Fitz to arrive, as he had himself, from nowhere. While he did so, he reflected on how his headache had disappeared. He bunked away the grains of sand that the edge of a squall had thrown up, and turned a complete circle. He was entirely alone, a long way from anywhere, with only a bag of jelly babies and a can of fizzy Vimto in his pockets.

Could be worse, he reflected. It could have been a can of Tizer.

'Doctor.'

Behind him stood a silhouette, a tall and hooded outline unmoved by the whirling gusts of sand, probably on account of the long heavy robes. They dropped to the soft ground from the figure's thin shoulders like velvet curtains. The figure drew back its hood.

'I shouldn't do that, if I were you,' said the Doctor in a conversational tone. 'Best leave your hood up and keep the sand out of your ... ah, I see. Well, perhaps I should have guessed.'

The figure didn't flinch from the growing storm, protected as it was by an angular mask of solid bone. No eyes were visible through the dead sockets. The whole top half of the face was obscured by the cadaverous disguise. Two razoredged canines curved savagely from the upper jaw. Beneath this, just visible, withered skin covered a sharp jawline, hardly less skeletal than the mask. The mouth moved from side to side as though chewing, and between the bloodless lips filthy brownblack teeth scraped together. It took a moment for the Doctor to recognise mirthless laughter.

'Do share the joke,' said the Doctor. 'I haven't heard a good gag since the late fourteenth century.'

The teeth stopped grinding. 'You have a mission.' The voice was surprisingly soft. It seemed almost whispered, yet it cut through the sound of the wind as though spoken directly in the Doctor's inner ear.

'And the punchline would be ...?' The Doctor turned away, trying to look unimpressed.

Unnervingly, the figure stayed in his eyeline, circling him effortlessly. 'I am the Uncle Kristeva. We are Faction -'

'You are Faction Paradox,' spat the Doctor. 'Yes, I know. That much is patently obvious.' He lunged sharply towards the figure, hoping to peer deep into the bony sockets, to stare down the Faction Paradox agent and show he was not as scared as he felt.

Kristeva floated effortlessly away from him. 'You're not listening, Doctor. We are Faction Paradox.'

'Gin and tonic twice, barman,' muttered the Doctor. 'All right, sir, I heard you the first time.'

'I am Faction. You are Faction.' Now Kristeva loomed closer, and the Doctor could stare into those dead sockets. Could see that there was nothing behind them. Could see the bone growing straight from the puckered dead skin of Kristeva's face. The rotted teeth were close to him now, and the sibilant breath hissed from the crooked mouth, yet the Doctor could smell and feel nothing. 'Since we first found you on Dust you have been ours, Doctor.

You've known that, surely. We infected you then, and our virus has worked on you throughout your successive lives.'

'Dust?' breathed the Doctor, looking around them at the unforgiving desert. 'Is that why you've brought me here?'

'Don't fight the virus any longer, Doctor,' breathed the soft voice. 'Your destiny can't be altered.'

'Hah!' roared the Doctor. 'You seem to be confusing things. I can't change the past. But I can prevent what is yet to happen though I wouldn't expect Faction Paradox to honour that distinction.'

The Doctor was disappointed that his defiance elicited only more mocking laughter from Kristeva. 'Believe that if you wish, Doctor. You'll belong fully to the Faction soon enough.

You'll perform our mission soon enough. Why not do it willingly now, not painfully later?'

'Whatever it is, I refuse. So you can send me back to my friends now. I don't want to spend another moment here on Dust.' He studied Kristeva's reaction. 'Oh,' he stumbled. "This planet isn't Dust.'

'No,' murmured Kristeva. He stretched his arms wide, and the long full sleeves of the robe fell back to reveal bonethin arms covered in stretched, liverspotted skin. The fingers on the clawlike hands grasped at the sky. 'Even though the virus in you wasn't yet strong enough, we were able to use Compassion's Remote inheritance to steer her here, to override her charmingly naive Randomiser. Those simpletons chasing you think that was their work. How little they understand you, Doctor. And how easily that will be their downfall.' The claw fingers pulled together into points on the wizened palms. 'Do you still not know where we've brought you?'

'Stupid of me,' admitted the Doctor. He studied the ripples in the sand at his feet, scuffing over them with the toe of his shoe. 'I've been away for so long that I hardly recognise the old place.'

'Yes,' said Kristeva, as though making an effort to congratulate a slow child. 'We thought it would save time if we assumed your acceptance. This is Gallifrey.'

The Doctor shaded his eyes with one hand and blinked up at Kristeva. 'And that bone place we landed in some kind of Faction holding area, I presume?'

Kristeva said nothing, and the Doctor shivered. A heavy weight was pressing down on his shoulders, which felt as though it might push him right down until the soft sand swallowed him whole. 'Promise me I won't have to wear one of your stupid masks.'

Kristeva inclined his head solemnly.

'All right; sighed the Doctor. 'You'd better tell me what you want me to do.'

So Uncle Kristeva began to brief his newest Faction agent. When he had finished, he said, 'No need to mention you've met me, Doctor. I wasn't here.'

The light faded on the horizon. The Doctor pulled up the collar of his jacket tight to keep warm. 'What about Fitz?'

'You don't need the boy,' hissed Kristeva. 'The boy is a distraction.'

'And how did you get here?' asked the Doctor, looking around. Kristeva was nowhere to be seen.

'I told you,' said the Uncle's voice in the Doctor's head, the sound of dead leaves blowing away. 'I never was.'

Chapter Six.